How race became embedded in a medical instrument
BREATHING
RACE INTO THE MACHINE:
The
Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics
By
Lundy Braun
University
of Minnesota Press l 304 pages l 2014
ISBN
978-0-8166-8357-4 l cloth l $24.95
Lundy
Braun traces the little-known history of the spirometer to reveal the ways
medical instruments have worked to naturalize racial and ethnic differences,
from Victorian Britain to today. An unsettling account of the pernicious
effects of racial thinking that divides people along genetic lines, this book
helps us understand how race enters into science and shapes medical research
and practice.
PRAISE
FOR BREATHING RACE INTO THE MACHINE:
"Breathing
Race into the Machine brilliantly tracks the remarkable story—lasting
to the present—of how ‘correcting for race’ in measures of lung capacity became
unremarkable scientific practice. This eye-opening account demonstrates that precision
technologies and statistical techniques that supposedly measure biological
differences accurately can mask racial myths and wreak devastating consequences
for black people’s health and legal rights. Essential reading for everyone
concerned about the impact of race on science and technology." —Dorothy
Roberts, University of Pennsylvania, author of Fatal Invention: How
Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century
"In Breathing
Race into the Machine, Lundy Braun powerfully reinvigorates our
understanding of how racial formation happens. An incisive, considered study of
a seemingly conventional physiology instrument, this book reveals science as a
foundational feature of the social construction of race. We create our own
difference engines, but Braun’s astute book reminds us that we do not have to
remain captive to them." —Alondra Nelson, author of Body
and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Lundy
Braun is
Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence, professor of medical science and
Africana studies, and a member of the Science and Technology Studies Program at
Brown University.
For
more information, including the table of contents, visit the book's website:
Please
email me if you have any questions.
Heather
Skinner, Publicist
University
of Minnesota Press
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3rd Ave S, Ste. 290
Minneapolis,
MN 55401-2520
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